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Sunday, April 23, 2017

A Viewer Writes: Dover Pools

I was wondering if you would post my complaint about dover pools on your site.

I purchased a pool from dover pools in Salisbury the process there was good. It was the installation side that's horrible. My trouble stated the first day when the install crew who didn't show up until 1pm all the while I missed a full day of work started their immediate shakedown of money for grading. After getting that straightened out still not to my satisfaction but wanting to move forward. They left at 4pm unfinished, I received a call stating they would return in a week to finish. It's now noon 1 week and 1 day later because of again rescheduling and another day of missed work no crew no pool and a messed up yard. I just wanted to let everyone else know maybe look at another pool company for their project. I am including pics of my install and what an install should look like.

23 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Yes you are right and I can testify the Dover Pool installation process is a joke. Dover has to take responsibility as they did the pre install survey then sent their sub-contractor to the side completely unprepared. I actually had to stop them at one point an call in my own contractor to do the grading and compaction to the tune of $1,000. Oh and the installers ruined two liners during installation. Pretty piss poor.

I tell all my friends, to have cash on hand when they install! They will find a way to make you pay extra at install. They will also leave a big mess when they leave, so be prepared. Their install does not cover anything but putting the pool up.

Also, please be aware if they have to dig down on one side to make it level, chances are you won't pass inspection with the county. The county will require a fence for the top of your pool where the grading was done.

alot of my friends have this type of pool. I think they are very ugly. i'd rather get a small blow up one from walmart or pony up the $$ to get an inground pool. These aluminum pools are expensive to maintain and usually last about 5-8 yrs.

I had mine done over 10 years ago. I cannot complain. They did a great job on my pool installation. Except for normal wear and tear on replace pump parts, still looks and works great. My only problem was with getting the permit. I had to get a health department permit to show it was no where near a septic tank and a county permit. Had the same Walmart pool there for years with no issue. Took me over a month to finally get approval, and that was after I found the right person in the county to contact. The only problem was the hassle of getting permission to put an above ground swimming pool on my property!!!!!! I know they hire out different contractors for this work, but as for the installation, I can't complain. After the install, get some pea gravel to put around the pool for erosion. Might want to also bury some chicken wire around the pool to keep moles from digging under you pool. This happened to me, and I now have a small rut where the mole dug. The problem stopped after burying the chicken wire around the pool.

I refuse to go to Dover pool. They are so unprofessional. I feel like they test your water, sell you a bunch of chemicals that screw up your water just to have it retested to sell you more chemicals to fix it! Go to Pool Tech. They are friendly and know what they are doing!

Bought a pool from Dover Pools in Salisbury about 5 years ago. Live in Delmar, DE. Had no trouble with the installation. Paid cash for the pool. Bought all my chemicals from Dover Pool, even though like some others I sometimes think Dover Pools tells you that you need chemicals that you don't need. My problem started with a wind storm. We had a freak thunderstorm one night that must have had a micro burst of wind. It blew off my cover and about the top half of the rails of the pool. Also broke the tops off of some of the support beams where the rails attached to them. Called my home owner's insurance and it was covered. Went down to Dover Pools, in Salisbury, where I bought the pool. Oh yes, we can help you, the manager says. You just need to tell me exactly which rails are missing and we'll get them ordered and get an installation team to come up and put them back on the pool. One month later I still could not even get Dover Pools to ORDER the pool parts. This is after I offered to pay cash and just have my insurance reimburse me, as I thought maybe that was the hold up. This is after I contacted the pool manufacturer and got specs on the pool and the specific pool part numbers for them. They told me they were having trouble finding an installer who would do the work because they would lose a whole day of "installing" just coming to fix my pool. Well, they weren't worried about that when they collected those thousands of dollars from me for the pool or the chemicals. But even with that argument aside, why would they not even order the parts? At about the six week period, I figured that was enough. Contacted the pool manufacturer again. Explained that if I could get Dover Pools to order the parts and install them or even just order the parts I would be glad to go with them but I couldn't get them to do anything. To make a long story short, I ordered the parts myself. Freighted them to my house. Installed them myself. And Dover Pools can kiss my A**. Piss poor customer service and they simply do not care.

Have had a similar experience with Bend Dove Pools also. Buying the pool is the easiest thing in the world. After that the wheels fall off. The installation crew left an 8" high mound of dirt next to the finished pool and told me it was my responsibility. The included water left the pool 1/4 low. Everything was an extra because the installers are sub-contractors and only get paid for what Dover Pools decides. It's up to the sub-contractor to wrangle the rest out of the customer. None of this is disclosed to the customer at the time of sale. And after all that having a pool really sucks.

Unless you have a perfect site to place a pool, site prep is going to cost extra. No different than erecting any other kind of "structure." One is naive if they think a pool company is going to erect/install a pool on an unprepared surface. But if they did, the homeowner would be the first to sue when the pool failed perform properly, or failed prematurely, due to lack of site prep. Bad-mouthing the pool company for a lack of planning by the homeowner, is not warranted.

Has anyone had any luck finding a customer service number , other than the location I purchased pool from? Paid for pool in full (8 grand) on May 9th, and can't be installed until July 5th....due to them being booked!!!